In my blog dated 9-18-2012, called "Zero to Millions Part 1", I left off discussing how I began with no money and proceeded to raise well over $6 million in funds for community development projects over a period of 10 years. Today I want to begin where I left off.
Visioning or seeing things as they will be is the first step. The next step in the Faith journey is to begin to identify the things that you need to bring your vision into reality. That is called planning and it requires some brain work. What were some of the things that I was going to need to bring this dilapidated home into a nice livable home for a family to live in? How could I best impact a neglected community and eyesore? The first thing we usually identify is money and that makes sense, but we need to understand that in many instances money may not be the first thing. You see, if you are doing something for the Kingdom of God money won't be the first priority, people will be. Allow me to give you an example.
In my town we have a federal prison and I discovered that they have a community based program within the federal prison that allows some of the inmates who are soon to be released, or who have demonstrated that they are no threat to society, to work with non profit groups on projects that uplift the community. This has a double benefit, first the non profit can obtain some badly needed talent that they cannot afford and two the inmate begins to get prepared for entering the world, establishing communication and other inter-personal skills that will help them to be a productive citizen in society. I immediately applied for this program, went through some training and shared my vision with the warden and explained how the inmates will work with me to rehabilate this home and make an example of a safe and affordable home for a low income family. The warden was impressed with this idea and approved our application to use up to 14 male inmates to advance our project. I now needed money to purchase the materials for the project and I went to the bank and explained to them what I was preparing to do and that I had a source of labor that would cost us nothing. The other benefit that God provided for me was that within this group I had very skilled people. One was a master electrician, one was a general contractor who had a very large business in a large city, the other was a master carpenter and some of the men were very good laborers. So these are the exceeding abundant blessing that come from a Faith walk. These men were so glad to get out of the confines of prison and they were on there best behavior. Moreover, I had a chance to show them the Love of Christ and give them a sense of community building.
Several of the men who worked with me wrote to me after leaving prison and told me about the impact our program had on their post prison life. One is now a church Pastor who has incorporated community development in his ministry, one opened up his own barber shop and is doing well as an entrepreneur. This is how God works, he allows your programs and Godly endeavors to help shape and build lives of people who you never knew or imagined. This is the part that I call "Above all that I could ask or think". You see in all of our works we are only going to see impart. We will never get the whole vision. But we can trust that the part that we do see in the Spirit will have far reaching benefit and blessings for us and others who the vision touches.
After acquiring the labor, I went to the local bank and explained to them how I planned to begin "Rebuilding the Walls Around The City" and the banker was moved to provide me with a small loan of $5,000 using the dilapidated house as collateral. I then wrote a grant to a foundation and I explained to them that we wanted to improve the neighborhood and that we wanted to use this one house as a demonstration model to show what could be done by the community with just a little help. Through the power of God I was able to convince the foundation to give us a grant in the amount of $40,000 and a smaller local community foundation gave us a grant in the amount of $2,500 because we explained to them how we were going to use young men from the community to help us rebuild this house and learn some home building skills. One of these young men happened to be my oldest son, who went on to receive his college degree and works with me today as my housing director. Another, blessing that I could not see when I began the visioning process. We now had the money needed to complete the task but to my point, the people came first.
After several months of working on this project many community residents, local elected officials and outside observers visited our work in the community heard our story. You see, it is very important to be able to tell your story and demonstrate your story while you are building. It's the story that compels men and women to participate, pray and cooperate with you. We had church Pastors stop by and admire our work and invite us into their churches to explain to their members how community development could be done. The newspaper came by and did a story on our work and how it was helping keep young men busy during the summer months and off the streets. I was asked to participate on radio talk shows and at conferences held by very important groups like the Kellogg Foundation and the Clinton School of Public Service. These entities also wanted to participate. We had very talented, young bright college students come in and provide free services to us. We also demonstrated to other potential investors that we were serious about what we were doing and that we had the ability to attract the things we needed to make something good happen in our community. Everybody loves a story of people organizing around a need and working to address it.
I remember mid-way through our work we had an out of town visitor come by to see what we were doing. He was a member of a family that were billionaire's. Yes, really, each of the family member were worth billions. They had gone beyond the millionaire status and were worth billions. It so happened that they were looking for a community based non profit to invest in to do community development projects and their representative had been watching us over the years and invited the family members to come to our site and visit our work. I had never walked among billionaires but the bible tells us that "Our Gift Will Bring Us Before Great Men". Our story and the demonstration of our work so compelled these billionaires that they gave us a grant in the amount of $500,000 toward future developments. Clearly, this investment has gone a long way in helping us do more housing developments. One other noticeable attribute of this investment was that we didn't have to pay the money back and when other investors found out who had given us this large sum of money, they wanted to contribute too. Some invested $100,000 and others invested much more. Even as much as $2,000,000. I could have never imagined that this one house that I had a heart to improve for a low income family would have this much compelling power. But that is what God does through us. He works in us both to do and to will his good pleasure. Also, he strengthens our hands to do the work that God has called us to do.
Well, there so much more to say about this story, but you just can't tell it all in one blog. So, I will be sharing more in the days and weeks ahead and my hope and prayer is that these real testimonies will advance your desire to move into action. First with a vision, and then take the steps to make it happen. It will be so rewarding and much more than you could ask or think. I assure you of that.
:-)
Enjoy the journey!
Visioning or seeing things as they will be is the first step. The next step in the Faith journey is to begin to identify the things that you need to bring your vision into reality. That is called planning and it requires some brain work. What were some of the things that I was going to need to bring this dilapidated home into a nice livable home for a family to live in? How could I best impact a neglected community and eyesore? The first thing we usually identify is money and that makes sense, but we need to understand that in many instances money may not be the first thing. You see, if you are doing something for the Kingdom of God money won't be the first priority, people will be. Allow me to give you an example.
In my town we have a federal prison and I discovered that they have a community based program within the federal prison that allows some of the inmates who are soon to be released, or who have demonstrated that they are no threat to society, to work with non profit groups on projects that uplift the community. This has a double benefit, first the non profit can obtain some badly needed talent that they cannot afford and two the inmate begins to get prepared for entering the world, establishing communication and other inter-personal skills that will help them to be a productive citizen in society. I immediately applied for this program, went through some training and shared my vision with the warden and explained how the inmates will work with me to rehabilate this home and make an example of a safe and affordable home for a low income family. The warden was impressed with this idea and approved our application to use up to 14 male inmates to advance our project. I now needed money to purchase the materials for the project and I went to the bank and explained to them what I was preparing to do and that I had a source of labor that would cost us nothing. The other benefit that God provided for me was that within this group I had very skilled people. One was a master electrician, one was a general contractor who had a very large business in a large city, the other was a master carpenter and some of the men were very good laborers. So these are the exceeding abundant blessing that come from a Faith walk. These men were so glad to get out of the confines of prison and they were on there best behavior. Moreover, I had a chance to show them the Love of Christ and give them a sense of community building.
Several of the men who worked with me wrote to me after leaving prison and told me about the impact our program had on their post prison life. One is now a church Pastor who has incorporated community development in his ministry, one opened up his own barber shop and is doing well as an entrepreneur. This is how God works, he allows your programs and Godly endeavors to help shape and build lives of people who you never knew or imagined. This is the part that I call "Above all that I could ask or think". You see in all of our works we are only going to see impart. We will never get the whole vision. But we can trust that the part that we do see in the Spirit will have far reaching benefit and blessings for us and others who the vision touches.
After acquiring the labor, I went to the local bank and explained to them how I planned to begin "Rebuilding the Walls Around The City" and the banker was moved to provide me with a small loan of $5,000 using the dilapidated house as collateral. I then wrote a grant to a foundation and I explained to them that we wanted to improve the neighborhood and that we wanted to use this one house as a demonstration model to show what could be done by the community with just a little help. Through the power of God I was able to convince the foundation to give us a grant in the amount of $40,000 and a smaller local community foundation gave us a grant in the amount of $2,500 because we explained to them how we were going to use young men from the community to help us rebuild this house and learn some home building skills. One of these young men happened to be my oldest son, who went on to receive his college degree and works with me today as my housing director. Another, blessing that I could not see when I began the visioning process. We now had the money needed to complete the task but to my point, the people came first.
After several months of working on this project many community residents, local elected officials and outside observers visited our work in the community heard our story. You see, it is very important to be able to tell your story and demonstrate your story while you are building. It's the story that compels men and women to participate, pray and cooperate with you. We had church Pastors stop by and admire our work and invite us into their churches to explain to their members how community development could be done. The newspaper came by and did a story on our work and how it was helping keep young men busy during the summer months and off the streets. I was asked to participate on radio talk shows and at conferences held by very important groups like the Kellogg Foundation and the Clinton School of Public Service. These entities also wanted to participate. We had very talented, young bright college students come in and provide free services to us. We also demonstrated to other potential investors that we were serious about what we were doing and that we had the ability to attract the things we needed to make something good happen in our community. Everybody loves a story of people organizing around a need and working to address it.
I remember mid-way through our work we had an out of town visitor come by to see what we were doing. He was a member of a family that were billionaire's. Yes, really, each of the family member were worth billions. They had gone beyond the millionaire status and were worth billions. It so happened that they were looking for a community based non profit to invest in to do community development projects and their representative had been watching us over the years and invited the family members to come to our site and visit our work. I had never walked among billionaires but the bible tells us that "Our Gift Will Bring Us Before Great Men". Our story and the demonstration of our work so compelled these billionaires that they gave us a grant in the amount of $500,000 toward future developments. Clearly, this investment has gone a long way in helping us do more housing developments. One other noticeable attribute of this investment was that we didn't have to pay the money back and when other investors found out who had given us this large sum of money, they wanted to contribute too. Some invested $100,000 and others invested much more. Even as much as $2,000,000. I could have never imagined that this one house that I had a heart to improve for a low income family would have this much compelling power. But that is what God does through us. He works in us both to do and to will his good pleasure. Also, he strengthens our hands to do the work that God has called us to do.
Well, there so much more to say about this story, but you just can't tell it all in one blog. So, I will be sharing more in the days and weeks ahead and my hope and prayer is that these real testimonies will advance your desire to move into action. First with a vision, and then take the steps to make it happen. It will be so rewarding and much more than you could ask or think. I assure you of that.
:-)
Enjoy the journey!
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